‘The Blair Witch Project’. Photo: Lionsgate.
Preview:
- A reboot of ‘The Blair Witch Project’ is moving forward.
- Blumhouse and Lionsgate are backing the movie.
- Rights to the project will be up for sale at the Cannes film market.
Cult hit and –– (gulp) since it was released in 1999 –– classic horror movie ‘The Blair Witch Project’ is venturing into the thorny woods of reboot territory.
Blumhouse is partnering with Lionsgate to figure out a new take on the low-budget chiller, with Dylan Clark, who has been making a name for himself in the YouTube sphere and has deals with other studios to adapt his work, on board to direct.
“Everything you’ve heard is true.”
Release Date: Jul 30, 1999
Run Time: 1 hr 21 min
Budget: $60,000
Deadline has heard that the companies are putting distribution rigtrs to the movie (outside of the UK and US, which Lionsgate will retain) up for sale at the coming Cannes Film Market.
Related Article: 11 Things You Never Knew About ‘The Blair Witch Project’
What was the story of the ‘The Blair Witch Project’?
‘The Blair Witch Project’. Photo: Lionsgate.
‘The Blair Witch Project’ followed three film students who vanished in a forest after filming a documentary about a witch legend, leaving only their found footage behind, which a canny marketing campaign spun could potentially be real.
The movie took in $248M global and became one of the most successful and influential horror movies ever. Two sequels have been released since then, most recently in 2016. Neither took off like the original but both still took close to $50M at the box office.
Who else is involved in the new ‘Blair Witch Project’?
Writer Chris Thomas Devlin crafted the original version of the new movie’s script, with Clark doing his own re-write.
And Joshua Leonard and Michael C. Williams, two of the stars of the original 1999 movie, as well as the original filmmakers—Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick and Gregg Hale —are aboard the project as executive producers. It’s a shift from the sequels, with which they had little to do.
‘The Blair Witch Project’. Photo: Lionsgate.